


Valentin's nightmare

by skeletonwaltz



Category: Fausts Alptraum
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, I'm in love with a secondary character from a really unknown game and I'm in pain, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other, Time Loop, rpg horror game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 16:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11189316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonwaltz/pseuds/skeletonwaltz
Summary: At least, Valentin wasn't aware of the tragedy he was cursed to reenact for as long as the girl's dream went on.





	Valentin's nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Heavy spoilers for the rpg horror game Fausts Alptraum follow.  
> I've tried to imagine Valentin's tragic destiny of looking for Marguerite while never being aware of his own death from falling from the balcony, as well as Elisabeth's feelings on the matter. I like to think she'd be sad about not being able to help poor Mr Broken Record. I sure as hell am.  
> I've also included some sentences straight out of the game, for accuracy.

“Enough is enough, go back with me.”

The words echoed faintly inside the young man’s mind but they were muzzled by the sound of the falling rain around him, over him. He felt his uniform soaked and heavy on his skin.

“No one will know as long as it’s handled properly.”

Had it been him pronouncing those words, pleading in a soft voice threatened to break into a cry of helplessness because of the lump in his throat? He remembered a feeling of urgency and need, a growing uneasiness creeping up his back, but it all felt distant, drowned by the feelings of cold stiffness of his drenched clothes and the hard cobblestone on which he lay.

“Everything will be fine if we end it early.”

“How can I make you listen to me?”

“You were lied to.”

“Wake up and see the truth!”

“He’s…”

A sound of shattered glass. A vase of flowers that had already bloomed, smashed against the checkered marble floor of the balcony. The image flashed through his closed eyelids. The remaining fragments of the vase were slowly being stained red, but it didn’t matter –soon it would all be washed off by the rain, the crimson streams, the spilt soil. Broken and then gone… He couldn’t have seen any of that, though, as he fell from the railing with eyes wide open in shock. Or had he…? It felt like a bad dream, one of those in which you fall endlessly to your death and wake up right before the crash, retaining only a hazy memory of plummeting downwards. 

Small raindrops kept splattering on the ground. He felt a presence. Footsteps, maybe? The young man’s eyes fluttered open. He tried to make out his surroundings with a blurry vision at first. Grey skies, green-colored patches here and there. Sitting up cost him a fair amount of willpower; his limbs felt numb and gravity fought stubbornly to pull him down again as if he had been made of the same heavy stone he was resting on. At least now he knew he was in the garden.

“Damn it, why am I still here…”, he mumbled to himself. He stared fixedly into the distance with bloodshot eyes, a dark flush slowly suffusing his wan pallor. He brought his hand to his forehead slowly, in a futile attempt to calm a throbbing headache that had suddenly struck him as he rose up. As he started regaining a sense of orientation and perception of his rigid body, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. A small girl in a green dress that would be beautiful were it not for the mud stains on its hem and apron. Her hands were clenched into tiny fists around a black umbrella that was far too big for her and she was looking at him with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. He wrinkled his brow, waiting for her to speak up, but she didn’t part her lips, the wary little thing.

“Who are you? This isn’t a place for children!” Eyes rimmed with sleeplessness stared at her. Maybe she was family to someone admitted into the institution, but she shouldn’t be wandering around there alone. Which reminded him…

“Damn it, where is she?”

Although his starched uniform was damp from the rain, he brushed at his trousers absentmindedly. Marguerite, of course! They had argued just a moment ago. She was out of her mind. By falling for the doctor and then wishing to keep the child that was produced by that sinful bond she proved that hospital was doing her no good at all –on the contrary, Valentin would have to take the matter into his own hands and get her out of there as soon as possible. He looked up towards the balcony but the fog and rain made it hard to make out. She must be in her room still, right? At the very least, she would be in the second floor.

He had to get to her before her crisis worsened. He believed the mansion’s backdoor was somewhere around the west garden.

“Oh, my head… I remember it was in this direction.” He rubbed his clouded eyes and sprung up. The girl kept staring at him intensely. She bit her lower lip and frowned.

Had he been too harsh to her? He was in a hurry, after all, but he still felt for the lonely auburn-haired child with big green eyes like those of a stray cat. He patted the girl’s head gently.

“Sorry, I’m in a rush. As I said, you shouldn’t be here. Hurry back home, alright?”

He then turned his back to her and strode off to the west. The anxiousness caused by his fight with Marguerite had drained his face of color and veiled his train of thought, and the harsh fall from the balcony sure hadn’t helped either. Valentin scratched the back of his head but aside from the pounding pain on his temple, he felt fine. He stormed around the mansion backyard searching for a way to get inside until he found a wooden door almost hidden by the vines on the stone wall. He hurried back inside the building and instinctively found his way upstairs and towards his sister’s room. He knew the way by heart from having visited so many times so he made it in a couple of minutes despite his smudgy vision and wavering carpets beneath his feet. “I must be dizzy from the fall, that’s all”, he reassured himself. “I have to find Marguerite…” The once luxurious deep blue walls, now tattered and covered in mold, loomed over him as he made his way through the house. The gallery of portraits gave off a feeling of uneasiness, the faces depicted on them indistinguishable to Valentin’s already foggy mind, filling him with dread. It was as if they were observing, mocking his efforts. But none of that mattered as long as he could get to Marguerite.

The room door slammed open and he rushed in but there was no one inside. He looked around frantically, barely noticing the scattered diary pages on the floor or the messy bedsheets. The window to the balcony was open and Valentin walked out in the rain again. Then, the headache struck him again like a lightning, with renewed strength. His vision turned red and everything around him became fuzzy, blurred, slowed-down. He stumbled across the balcony and got a hold of the white railing, trying not to fall onto his knees. The heated argument rung deafeningly loud in his head but at the same time muffled, as if he were under water: he could feel every reproach, every hurtful truth Marguerite had spat out. 

Then there was silence, a blunt hit to his chest and a brief instant on which he felt himself floating.

When he opened his eyes again he found himself laying on the muddied cobblestone of the garden. Raindrops fell on his forehead, followed his drenched dark hair and rolled down his cheeks. Across the backyard a little girl gazed at him, eyes glinting with sadness.

Valentin didn’t know how he had got there, neither had he a way of knowing that it wasn’t only the rain that soaked his crimson uniform. He stood up nonetheless, hand pressed to his forehead, and looked at Elisabeth.

“Eh! Who are you? This isn’t a place for children.” His voice sounded so tired.

His head ached as if it were about to crack open any moment, but he tried to shake it off, as well as Elisabeth’s sorrowful stare. She could find no words meaningful enough to convey what she wanted to say, not a sentence to comfort him in his obscure perplexity.

“Hnng”, he groaned. He cleared up his inner turmoil a bit and flashed a brief, somewhat tense smile to her. Marguerite should be in her bedroom still… or maybe she was around the backyard too, like he was. If that was the case, the girl might have seen her.

“Right, have you seen a young lady nearby? About this height”. He drew a line with the side of his palm.

The girl shook her head. Valentin left out a sigh.

“Alright, then stay here and don’t wander off.” He patted the girl’s head gently and started walking west.

Had his hand lingered a few seconds longer on Elisabeth’s copper hair or had he been free from that dream-like bedazzlement that impaired his thoughts and senses, he would have heard Elisabeth mutter something that got lost in the rain instead. But he had to get back to Marguerite after all.

“Please, wake up”, she whispered, aware of the pointlessness of it. Her words couldn’t have got through to him in any way. He’d smiled at her but he really didn’t see her. He had been beyond her reach since the very moment he had opened his dull, dead eyes under the rain.

“I have to find Marguerite and take her with me”, Valentin thought as he walked past the blooming roses and orchards, and then into the mansion and through its gloomy corridors. Once he found himself in his sister’s bedroom, the nightmarish echoes swallowed him up again, only to end abruptly as his body sunk into a blissful nothingness and then lay limply on the ground beneath the balcony. Then it all started anew.

As he stood up on his muddied feet once more, he looked at a girl in a green dress and mumbled some kind words to her as he scratched the back of his head. “Maybe I’ve seen her somewhere before”, he thought, but he couldn’t quite remember. She wore a dreary expression and averted her gaze when he looked at her.

“Hurry back home, alright?”

Elisabeth’s lower lip trembled, but he didn’t notice. His mind was already wandering off towards a pre-determined route he somehow felt impelled to follow. His gaze flicked away as soon as he looked in her direction, as if there was nothing in his line of vision.

With heavy footsteps, he slowly walked off into the rainy mist and was gradually obscured by the gloomy color, vanishing into that far off distance.


End file.
